Anyone who’s had a beer at Peel Pub, situated a couple blocks away from the Canadiens’ home arena, knows Montreal is a lively place.

There’s a lot to do on a Friday in Canada’s second-largest city (Toronto’s first), much of it involving drinking. Hey, Montreal’s productive, and its residents need to kick back after a busy week.

Montreal is home to a variety of industries, including aerospace, electronic goods, pharmaceuticals, software engineering, telecommunications, film and television production and video games. It also boasts Canada’s oldest stock exchange and the headquarters of two of the country’s biggest banks, Bank of Montreal and Royal Bank of Canada.

All of which is to say, Montreal is a bustling, 21st century city, with correspondingly high-tech demands. One of those demands is adequate mobile coverage.

Fortunately,they can rest easy knowing their city mostly has good coverage from Canada's major carriers. Read on to learn about the ins and outs of cell phone coverage in Montreal.

Coverage in Montreal At-a-Glance

Montreal skates in with a strong coverage score of 86 out of
100. Here's a guide to coverage for the entire province of Quebec.

What we love

Rogers, Bell and Telus offer great coverage

MVNOs that run on Rogers and Telus provide similarly excellent coverage

4G LTE
widely available

What could be improved

Freedom completely absent from the party

Coverage less reliable the further you travel from the city

86/100

Carrier
Network Coverage in Montreal

If you're from Quebec, you're no doubt familiar with Videotron. They are one of the biggest TV, internet and wireless providers in the province, and operate their own network that competes with the four you see below.

Putting aside the Videotron, three of the major networks perform excellently throughout Montreal. This means you can join any of these to get great
coverage--or the multitude of smaller carriers that run on their
networks.

Best Coverage in
Montreal by Network

Network

Covered Area %

Bell

99.99%

Rogers

99.99%

Freedom

0.00%

Telus

99.99%

Cell Phone
Coverage in Montreal by Area

Montreal encompasses 137.92 square miles, and the
most robust local carriers, Rogers, Bell and Telus, cover nearly every bit of it.

Geographic Area
Covered in Montreal per mi2

Montreal is broadly covered by both 3G and 4G LTE technology. 3G is the
network that some older phones run on, and the one newer 4G LTE-capable
devices fall back to when unable to reach a primary network. Here's how much
territory the top carriers cover:

Coverage in Montreal (137.92 m2) by 3G/4G LTE

Bell

Rogers

Freedom

Telus

3G

137.92

137.92

0.00

137.92

4G LTE

137.92

137.92

0.00

137.92

Big Carriers
vs. Small Carriers in Montreal

When choosing a cell phone providers, there's no need to limit yourself to
the big companies. There are dozens of smaller carriers that run on the major
networks, but charge a fraction of the price for service. Known as Mobile
Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs for short), these carriers purchase network service from
the major providers at wholesale prices, then pass the savings on to
consumers.

Getting the
Best Plan & Coverage

WhistleOut's industry-leading coverage check feature supercharges an already robust comparison
engine by allowing you to instantly see what coverage is like at your
location. Just punch in your address, and we'll do the rest.

In addition to showing you a map of your area with the coverage from all
four major carriers, we filter through the available cell phone plans and present only those from
carriers who provide good reception to you.

Cell Phone
Carriers in Montreal

Here's the list of wireless carriers big and small in Montreal, and
the network that each belongs to. Note that the smaller
carriers—PhoneBox, Fido, etc.—utilize the networks of the
major carriers.

One More Thing: Using Public WiFi in Montreal

Montreal is an extremely mobile friendly city, with free public wifi ("MTLWiFi") covering a good portion of downtown. That becomes extremely useful when you either need a stronger connection or want to avoid draining your cellular data.

Here's a map of the covered area. You can expect this area to grow in the coming months, as the city has announced plans to both bolster the power of existing hotspots and expand overall coverage area.

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